The Significance of Poincare’s Election

Published:PravdaNo 11, January 15, 1913.

      Signed:V. I..

      Published according to thePravdatext.Source:Lenin
	  Collected Works,

      Progress Publishers,[1975],

      Moscow,Volume 18,

      pages487-488.Translated:Stepan ApresyanTranscription\Markup:R. CymbalaPublic Domain:Lenin Internet Archive

      (2004).You may freely copy, distribute,
	display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and
	commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet
	Archive” as your source.•README

Thenew President of the French Republic is being
effusively congratulated. Take a look at the Black-Hundred-pogromistNovoye Vremyaand the liberalRech: how touchingly
unanimous they are in congratulating President Poincare and expressing
their delight!

Theappraisal of foreign policy issues and of the state of affairs in
the Western countries is particularly indicative of the profound inner
kinship of our Black Hundreds and our liberals. The fact that both of them
hail the “national” President, Poincaré, who has been elected by
an alliance of the big bourgeoisie and clerical and feudal reaction in
France, makes it clear to anyone that the Black Hundreds and liberals
disagree only overmethodsof combating socialism.

ButPoincaré’s election is of greater interest than the zealous
“congratulators” think. Class-conscious workers, in pondering on the
significance of this election, note three circumstances.

Firstly,Poincaré’s election means another step forward in
aggravating the class struggle confronting France. Poincaré was
Premier in a Chamber having aRadicalmajority. But he has been
elected Presidentagainstthe Radical candidate, Pains, with the
aid ofclerical and feudalreaction, and by theRight
bloc.

Whatdoes that mean? Power in France is in the hands of thelastbourgeois party, the

Radicals.[1]It is becoming less and less distinguishable from
“reaction”. Thewholebourgeoisie—from radical to
reactionary—is uniting ever more closely against the socialist
proletariat, and the boundary between the two sections of the bourgeoisie
is becomingmore and more obliterated. This was revealed all the more vividly by the
election of Poincaré. This sort of unity is an unmistakable sign of
the extreme aggravation of class antagonisms.

Secondly,Poincaré’s career is worthy of note, being that of a
typical bourgeois businessman who sells himself in turn to all parties in
politics, and to all rich men “outside” politics. Poincaré has
been a lawyer by profession since the age of twenty. At twenty-six he was achef de cabinetand at thirty-three, a Minister. Rich men and the
big-wigs of finance in all countries think highly of the political
connections of suchdexterouscareerists. A
“brilliant” lawyer-deputy and a political trickster aresynonymsin the “civilised” countries.

Worthyof note, thirdly, is the demonstration made by the French
Socialists during Poincaré’s election. The vote in favour of
Vaillant was a demonstration in honour of the Commune. Vaillant is a living
memory of it. One has only to see the welcome which Parisian workers give
the white-haired Vaillant when he appears on the platform to realise this.

Andnow, in the very same Versailles where bourgeois France in 1871
sold its country to Bismarck in order to crush the revolt of the
proletariat, and in the very same hail where forty-two years ago was heard
the beastly howling of the reactionary landlords of France who were longing
for a king, the working-class deputies voted for a veteran Communard.

[1]TheRepublican Party of Radicals and Radical-Socialists—a
French bourgeois party which took organisational shape in 1901. In realityit has existed since the 1880s. Before the First World War it represented
mainly the interests of the petty and middle bourgeoisie. Between the First
and the Second world wars the big bourgeoisie increased its influence in
it. Its leaders have repeatedly headed French governments.